Israeli analysts say speech by the Palestinian leader reflects his true colors as an ideological denier of Jewish rights in the Land of Israel.

Israelis who have closely followed the career of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas were not surprised by the extreme comments included in his speech on Sunday night to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Central Council meeting in Ramallah. During his rambling two-and-a-half-hour speech, Abbas rejected Jewish ties to the Holy Land, described Israel as a colonial project unconnected to Judaism, and asserted that European Jews chose to die in the Holocaust rather than go to Palestine. The tone was similar to the notorious book written by Abbas in 1982, titled The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism, in which he argues that the Holocaust had been exaggerated and that Zionists created “the myth” of six million murdered Jews...

A defining moment
Speaking to WIN, Itamar Marcus of Palestine Media Watch emphasized the parts of Abbas’ speech dealing with the Trump administration’s peace efforts. “Essentially, Abbas told the US, ‘we don’t need you anymore’ and that there is no going back. He even accused the US of having been behind the Arab Spring in order to redraw the borders of the Middle East.”

Marcus views Abbas’s speech as a defining moment. “He had been very careful to watch his words, but now he says clearly that we, the Jewish people, have no right to exist in Israel and that we have no history in this land. Now he is saying what his ideology has always been. This is not a going away speech, but rather an uncompromising last stand.”